Lord of the Flies (2023)

FAQs

What is Lord of the Flies actually about? ›

William Golding's 1954 novel "Lord of the Flies" tells the story of a group of young boys who find themselves alone on a deserted island. They develop rules and a system of organization, but without any adults to serve as a civilizing impulse, the children eventually become violent and brutal.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding was challenged in the Waterloo Iowa schools in 1992 because of profanity, lurid passages about sex, and statements defamatory to minorities, God, women, and the disabled.

The central concern of Lord of the Flies is the conflict between two competing impulses that exist within all human beings: the instinct to live by rules, act peacefully, follow moral commands, and value the good of the group against the instinct to gratify one's immediate desires, act violently to obtain supremacy ...

Lord of the Flies by William Golding has been a staple in high school English classrooms for decades, mainly because of its biting analysis of human nature and the need for society in order to avoid the deadly dangers of chaos.

Controversy over Content

Much of the disturbing passages from Lord of the Flies involve graphic images of violence. As the boys stay on the island lengthens, Golding gradually exposes the innate, savage nature of human beings. Thus, Golding has the boys resort to hunting and killing animals.

The spectacles represent the boys' only means of obtaining fire through reflecting the sun's rays, and fire itself is symbolic of survival and rescue. Jack snatches the glasses off Piggy's face to create the fire, despite Piggy's protestations, and his dependence upon them.

Profanity & Violence

Characters use God's name in vain, and d–n you once or twice. Violence intensifies as the characters become less civilized: First they kill pigs with spears, enjoying the pigs' squealing and blood.

The characters in Lord of the Flies can be interpreted as prototypes of human behaviour, where Ralph represents civilization and leadership, and Jack represents the savagery within the human soul. In a broader sense, we may consider Ralph as representing "good" and Jack as representing "evil".

This newly discovered mask allows him to do these strange things in front of other boys without feeling insecure; the mask gives him the power to act without thinking realistically about what he is doing. Once Jack has begun to wear a mask, his personality and actions change harshly.

Who kills Piggy? ›

While Piggy admonishes the boys for becoming savages, Roger releases a huge boulder in Piggy's direction, knocking him off the cliff to his death on the rocks below. A large wave quickly carries off his body.

Let's get the easy part out of the way first: "the Lord of the Flies" is what Simon ends up calling the severed pig's head—presumably because it's covered in flies. So, calling the book Lord of the Flies brings the boys' primitive violence front and center.

This book's Lexile measure is 770L and is frequently taught in the 9th and 10th grade.

Literary criticism of Lord of the Flies has resulted in it being banned in some schools for being political, as well as being discriminatory. It has been considered racist as English boys mimic the life of Indigenous civilizations. It has also been considered sexist for having no female characters.

“Lord of the Flies is hard, and significantly harder [than The Outsiders], significantly more complex,” said Lemov. “Anyone who has read that book knows how hard it is. It has archaic language, it's full of allusions to different worlds, they use British English.”

Dramatic Irony in Lord of the Flies

The irony is that grownups are afraid. They can't discuss and agree on things. That is the reason the boys are trapped on an island. If adults could discuss, there would have been no war, and the boys would be safe at school.

Introduced as a quiet and intense older boy, Roger eventually becomes a sadistic and brutal terrorist over the course of Lord of the Flies . Midway through the book, Roger's cruelty begins to surface in an episode where he terrorizes the littlun Henry by throwing rocks at him.

In the final pages of Lord of the Flies , Ralph runs through the jungle fleeing both Jack and his pack of savage boys and the fire Jack set on the mountain. Ralph emerges onto the beach and is discovered by a British Naval officer who has come ashore after seeing the burning island from his ship.

Here, Golding makes clear that the pig's head, which is also referred to as Lord of the Flies, another name for the Devil, is a symbol of the beast, which represents evil. During his hallucination, Simon understands that the beast is not something that can be killed because it exists inside humans.

Jack, Ralph's antagonist, represents the brilliant world of hunting, tactics, fierce exhilaration, skill and dictator, the authoritarian man-of-power who enters the scene like a sergeant. Jack is the strong-willed, egomaniacal boy, who is the novel's prime representative of the instinct of savagery and violence.

What does Roger symbolize in Lord of the Flies? ›

Roger represents the sadist, the individual who enjoys hurting others. His evil motives are different from Jack's, who pursues leadership and stature and enjoys the thrill of the hunt. Roger just likes to hurt people.

In reading Lord of the Flies the writer finds out that character named Jack Merridew exhibits symptoms Narcissistic Personality Disorder (also referred to as NPD), some types of self defense mechanism, and violent behavior throughout the story.

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Blood & gore depiction. Death of a child. Death of a friend. Plane crash.

In the darkness, Simon crawls into the group and tries to tell them what he has seen but it is too late. The boys have lost all control and thinking he is the Beast, they kill Simon - even Ralph and Piggy are involved. That night, Simon's body is carried out to sea.

In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, the character of Simon is also put to death while trying to spread knowledge to the other boys on the island. His death is meaningful because it calls attention to many of the symbolic messages in the book.

Analysis: Chapter 11

As we see in the next chapter, Ralph, the boy most closely associated with civilization and order, destroys the Lord of the Flies, the governing totem of the dark impulses within each individual.

Jack eventually forms a breakaway group of his own and swiftly becomes a violent dictator. By the end of the novel, he is ordering the torture of other boys and even tries to organise the murder of Ralph. Jack is an unlikeable character, motivated by evil and whose bad traits only get worse as the story progresses.

When Piggy shrilly complains about the hunters' immaturity, Jack slaps him hard, breaking one of the lenses of his glasses.

They cut off the pig's head, and Jack asks Roger to 'sharpen a stick at both ends'. As Jack places the head on a stick he says: 'This head is for the beast. It's a gift'. Simon has secretly watched this, and is haunted by the image.

Answer and Explanation: In Lord of the Flies, Jack paints his face like a mask to act as camouflage so the pigs cannot see him when he is hunting. The mask, however, gives him a new identity and allows him to separate from the rules of society.

What is foreshadowing in Lord of the Flies? ›

The death is foreshadowed in the early pages, when Piggy tells Ralph he has asthma, can't swim, needs his glasses to see, and is sick from the fruit. “Sucks to your ass-mar!” Ralph replies, foreshadowing the boys' lack of concern about Piggy's physical vulnerability.

Ralph and Piggy discover the conch shell on the beach at the start of the novel and use it to summon the boys together after the crash separates them. Used in this capacity, the conch shell becomes a powerful symbol of civilization and order in the novel.

Before arriving, Piggy says his last words: "Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?" A short time later at the camp, Piggy stays back while Ralph tries to talk sense to Jack but it breaks down and the two boys fight. A boulder is rolled downhill, missing Ralph but hitting Piggy.

Piggy scolds Jack's group for becoming savages, and while he is speaking, Roger pushes a boulder down the hill. The boulder knocks the conch out of Piggy's hands and knocks him off of the cliff. Piggy lands on rocks below, and the ocean washes his body away.

The only survivors are boys in their middle childhood or preadolescence. A fair-haired boy named Ralph and a fat boy named Piggy find a conch, which Ralph uses as a horn to convene the survivors to one area. Ralph immediately commands authority over the other boys using the conch, and is elected their "chief".

Piggy's real name is never revealed. Instead he is treated as though he is one of the pigs on the island - also like one of them, he is brutally killed. Piggy remains an outsider and a victim throughout the novel, though Ralph does come to respect him.

In the Bible, Beelzebub is another name for the devil and is also translated to "lord of the flies." It was "one of the most loathsome and repulsive of the false gods in the Old Testament" (Carter, 2010, para. 3).

Piggy. Piggy is a fat, shy twelve-year-old boy who has asthma; he is the only one who knows how to correctly pronounce asthma. The other boys on the island pronounce it as "ass-mar".

Lord of the Flies explores the dark side of humanity, the savagery that underlies even the most civilized human beings. William Golding intended this novel as a tragic parody of children's adventure tales, illustrating humankind's intrinsic evil nature.

Is Lord of the Flies movie appropriate for a 10 year old? ›

Lord of the Flies (1963), directed by Peter Brook, was classified X (suitable only for those aged 16 and over) for language and nudity as well as the final scenes in the film, which were considered too strong and alarming for children.

He cannot be the leader himself because he lacks leadership qualities and has no rapport with the other boys. Piggy also relies too heavily on the power of social convention. He believes that holding the conch gives him the right to be heard. He believes that upholding social conventions get results.

While Ralph proves in many ways a thoughtful, charismatic, and effective leader, his leadership is flawed by his indecision and inability to think clearly in crucial moments. Ralph's confusion in decisive moments proves too great a weakness for him to maintain his leadership peacefully.

The average reader will spend 3 hours and 12 minutes reading this book at 250 WPM (words per minute). How quickly can you read this book?

Lord of the Flies is a classic for a reason. It's well worth a read and really quite readable as classics go. If you're looking for an short classic book to get yourself into reading classics then Lord of the Flies is a great book to start with.

In reading Lord of the Flies the writer finds out that character named Jack Merridew exhibits symptoms Narcissistic Personality Disorder (also referred to as NPD), some types of self defense mechanism, and violent behavior throughout the story.

The novel gets its title from the Lord of the Flies, which is a severed pig's head mounted on a stick by Jack and his band of hunters. Simon, a shy and quiet boy who is an allegory of Christ, hallucinates that the head is talking to him and taunting him. The Lord of the Flies is a symbol of Beelzebub, or Satan.

The devastating realization for both Ralph and the reader suggests that despite our best efforts to uphold order and civility, humans are inherently prone to self-destruction. This ending suggests that despite what we want to believe, the line between civilized order and inherent human savagery is blurred.

The Beast. The imaginary beast that frightens all the boys represents the primal instinct of savagery that exists within all human beings. The boys are afraid of the beast, but only Simon reaches the realization that they fear the beast because it exists within each of them.

Jack begins to change slowly and develops a crazy and violent side. We see this when his hunting job starts to take over his mind and we are told Jack had a “compulsion to track down and kill things that was swallowing him up”.

What is irony in Lord of the Flies? ›

Dramatic Irony in Lord of the Flies

The irony is that grownups are afraid. They can't discuss and agree on things. That is the reason the boys are trapped on an island. If adults could discuss, there would have been no war, and the boys would be safe at school.

Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of a true, wise friend called Piggy. These lines from the end of Chapter 12 occur near the close of the novel, after the boys encounter the naval officer, who appears as if out of nowhere to save them.

The surviving boys are rescued, leaving the death count at two confirmed: Simon and Piggy; however, one of the littluns has not been seen again after the first fire they set, so there is the possibility that the fire killed him.

Jack eventually forms a breakaway group of his own and swiftly becomes a violent dictator. By the end of the novel, he is ordering the torture of other boys and even tries to organise the murder of Ralph.

Analysis: Chapter 9

With the brutal, animalistic murder of Simon, the last vestige of civilized order on the island is stripped away, and brutality and chaos take over.

Again, Piggy interrupts and, holding the conch, attempts a speech as well. While Piggy admonishes the boys for becoming savages, Roger releases a huge boulder in Piggy's direction, knocking him off the cliff to his death on the rocks below.

Jack Merridew is the main antagonist in Lord of the Flies. Throughout the novel he stands in Ralph's way as Ralph attempts to create a civilized society on the island.